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Friday, January 31, 2014

May I just say here how insanely irritating I find it when "professional" PUAs like Roosh refer to seducing women as "work", as in (God-help-me-I'm-not-kidding), "the important work I do," or the disappointment of not getting to intercourse after "putting in hours of hard work."

Excuse my vent, but I have been working for forty consecutive years. And by "work" I mean: going to a job every single day, doing what I was told to do to the best of my ability (even when I didn't usually feel like it), and biting my tongue over and over and over again.

Have any of these manospherean bloggers ever held a real job for more than a year? When did blogging-for-donations while extending one's adolescence beyond thirty become a respectable lifestyle for a man?

I can't post this rant on manboobz cuz someone will accuse me of being "ableist."

So yesterday Facebook took away Roosh's "privileges" for a full 24 hours -- a kind of "time out" -- because of complaints about LMR (Last Minute Resistance), a "rape guide" by Return of Kings author Vincent Vinturi. Then Amazon, alerted by Huff Po UK, decided to pull the book from its inventory.Needless to say. the boys over at ROK are pretty steamed at this "attack" on their "freedom of speech", while the gals over at Jezebel are crowing.Personally, it is a matter of complete indifference to me whether Amazon carries this book or not. There are plenty of books available that I would probably find even more despicable and offensive. And it's not like this notion (that men can overcome women's initial objections through coercion) is a new or novel approach or isn't the stuff of a hundred years' worth of popular fantasy. What these boys don't understand is that media conveyers like Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon are corporations which have the right, nay, the obligation, to refuse custom that they believe will hurt their bottom line. It probably took Amazon about five minutes flat to figure out that the paltry profits it would get from this execrable self-published tome weren't worth the shit-load of bad PR its existence was creating among its literate customer base, who actually buy real books (and lots of other stuff). Du-uh!

I read some of the comments over at Huff Po UK. One male commentator complained rather peevishly that women "always say no when they really mean yes." In fact, neither women nor men always do anything, but I do understand why some men accuse some women of being disingenuous.

As a former proud, card-carrying slut, I have had loads of sex (mostly meaningless and quite forgettable) with a lots of different men. I have never said "no" when I meant "yes". I have occasionally said "no" when I meant, "Maybe later -- I'm not sure yet." And once I did back out at the very last minute because a prospective partner smelled really bad, which I didn't realize until he had taken off his shoes, and I'm sorry, but ew, no no no. And occasionally I said "no" when I was pretty sure I was going to say "yes" on the third date because -- well, I didn't want the guy to dismiss me as a "slut."

This is a topic that I wish the manosphereans and the young ladies they lust after & resent could have a really honest conversation about.

Gentlemen, I will concede this: Young women need to take ownership of their desires. A woman who, at the last minute, says "no" while secretly hoping the man will ram through her explicit refusal is being fundamentally dishonest with and unfair to both herself and her partner. And, frankly, if I were a guy, and I suspected a woman was playing me like that, I wouldn't like her one little bit. At the very least, I wouldn't trust her any farther than I could throw her. She sounds like a bad bet for a lot of reasons, and the last thing a man should do, under those circumstances, is proceed to fuck her. This is where I want to grab these boys by their short hairs, and say, I know you're horny, but don't be a moron!

Trust me, fellas: Women want sex too. A woman who truly wants to have sex with you, and understands that you will not proceed without her unambiguous permission, will step up to the plate. And if such a woman loses respect for you because your deference strikes her as somehow unmanly, well, this is a person with some issues you are better off staying well clear of.

Nobody has ever died of blue balls. In fact, back in the day before people expected instant gratification of every imaginable appetite, all that built up "frustrating" tension could result in some ultimately intense, explosive release. Try to think of sex as a ride, not just a destination.

And so what if you "miss" a particular sexual opportunity and -- the horror! -- it never presents itself again? What, are you still crying about the ice cream cone you dropped at the State Fair when you were in second grade? Don't be such a fucking baby.By the way, I do find the way Roosh exhorts his flying monkeys to push back against critics quite chilling. He and Matt Forney seem to have taken a cue from Paul Elam of A Voice for Men by advocating the intimidation and harassment of young women he identifies as "hostile" to his "movement." There's a weird sexual sadism vibe here too: he tends to target the younger, more attractive girls for these campaigns.

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

How many people do you know who became fluent in a language they started learning in their 30's?

I have been a language teacher for over thirty years, and I have to say that based on my experience, the answer to that question is, unfortunately, none. Even young adults (early twenties) are at a marked disadvantage compared to adolescents in acquiring second language fluency. Of course, there is individual variance. Some people are innately gifted at languages. I knew an Afghan guy whose oral proficiency in English was astounding considering he did not learn the language until he came to the U.S. in his mid-twenties. Of course, he was raised bilingually (Dari and Pashto), which may be why a third language came relatively easily. And we can look with awe at linguistic virtuosi like Conrad (who learned English in his early twenties by reading newspapers) and Nabokov (who in fact grew up with a melange of French and English governesses). But these are the exceptions that prove the rule.

Roosh has been trying to learn Russian for a couple of years. He has
indicated he plans to stay in the FSU forever, so naturally he wants to
become fluent in the lingua franca. I for one fully support his ambition to never return to the U.S. Unfortunately, he is probably about
twenty years too late. He needed to have moved to Ukraine when he was fourteen or fifteen years old to have had a real shot at achieving true, "native-like" fluency.

I'm surprised that Roosh, the child of Iranian parents who immigrated to the U.S. in their twenties, doesn't already know this. He has only to look at their limited English ability after 35 years in America.

Right now I have a Korean gentleman of 80-odd years in one of my classes, and I'm happy to have him there because he is a quite pleasant person, but in terms of becoming more fluent in English? He is a lost cause. That doesn't mean he is wasting his time or money, necessarily: continuing to study is probably helping him maintain his skills and providing him with all kinds of cognitive and social stimulation that is beneficial. And he seems to be enjoying the camaraderie and companionship of being in class.

That doesn't mean that adults cannot learn a new language, simply they can never realistically hope to learn it with fluency. The older a student is, the less successful he or she will be in being fully proficient in a second language. This has to do with the decreasing plasticity of the areas of the brain responsible for acquiring new language and that first language acquisition does not seem possible after a critical stage (pre-puberty). There are some interesting studies out there that I'm not in the mood to review right now -- and I'm surprised Roosh hasn't googled the research himself -- but maybe he already suspects what they're going to confirm.

Poor Roosh! How frustrating it must be to realize that the Russian speaking ladies he fancies will never be able to fully appreciate the depth and breadth of his intellectual prowess -- since, no matter how hard he studies those flash cards, he will be pretty much confined to eighth grade discourse with them.

And it will be hard for him to maintain the facade of being a dominant "alpha" male when he must rely on his girlfriend to navigate doctor's visits, commercial transactions, or complex social situations of any kind. Sure, he'll be able to go out and buy a kilo of potatoes for supper, but with whom will he discuss politics and philosophy or the great issues of our day?

(Curiously, first language development can continue to improve into late middle age.)